


I Took Your Counsel and Came to Ruin

by EllEli



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M, Mental Health Issues, Self Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 17:02:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1557689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllEli/pseuds/EllEli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And maybe he’s known for a while now, but for the first time, Mickey admits something to himself, in the quiet of his own heart.</p><p>Something’s gotta give.</p><p>And if they don’t do something now, that something is gonna be Ian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Took Your Counsel and Came to Ruin

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song "Everlasting Arms" by Vampire Weekend.
> 
> This story deals with the aftermath of the season four finale. It deals with a lot of themes like suicidal idealization and depression, and if you are triggered by these things, I recommend turning back. Similarly, I chose to tell the story from Mickey's point of view, instead of Ian's, because for me, as a person who has struggled with these things myself, I thought it would be emotionally easier getting into Mickey's mindset than Ian's.
> 
> There is a happy ending.

The Gallaghers stop coming by after the first week.

Mickey wants to be mad at them, because being mad at them would be easy, but he can’t be. He doesn’t like seeing Ian like this, either. If he could ignore it, sweep it under the rug, focus on his own problems, he would. The difference between them and him is that he can’t.

Ian’s shit is his shit. Separating the two isn’t possible. Not anymore, at least.

Occasionally, they still call.

Sometimes, Ian will take the phone. He’ll sit by the window in the bedroom he and Mickey now share, answer whatever questions they’re asking on the other end with clipped yeses or or nos. It isn’t much for conversation, but it’s progress, and progress is good.

Sometimes, when Ian is sleeping, or not in the mood, Mickey will take the phone out onto the front porch and endure five minutes of tense back and forth to give them whatever they’re looking for.

“Is he eating?” “Is he talking?” “Is he getting out of bed?”

The answers are all the same. “Sometimes, but not nearly as much as he should.”

Occasionally, Fiona will ask about him going back to school, and Mickey forces himself to bite down on the hate that flicks against his tongue. Ian’s trying to stay alive every day, and she’s asking him if he’s planning to go get a diploma. Sometimes he can’t bite it down fast enough and the hate comes out anyway. On those days, she’ll say goodbye like a wounded animal, and Mickey will be left feeling guilty and sick for a few hours.

Only a few hours, though. He doesn’t have any more time than that to spare caring about her.

One day, after a short conversation with Lip, Ian falls back into the bed and tosses the phone in Mickey’s direction. Mickey picks it up and slides it into his pocket, stares down at the boy nestled in his sheets.

“He have anything new to say?”

Ian shakes his head, shrugs his shoulders. Rolls over onto his side to blink up at Mickey. Mickey smiles. A little forced, but still a smile, cause it’s still Ian, and fuck him if Ian won’t always be the thing that makes him happy. Even now.

“I’m gonna make dinner, any requests, princess?”

Ian just keeps staring at him and after a long minute, Mickey nods and turns back towards the kitchen. He’s halfway there when he hears the soft reply of, “Burgers sounds good,” come from the room.

He pauses in the hallway, glances over his shoulder. Smiles a little bigger and nods.

“Yeah. Burgers.”

Progress.

**********

It’s the middle of the night on a Wednesday that Mickey puts a bullet in Kenyatta’s leg. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Mandy and Kenyatta have been fighting for the past hour, locked in her bedroom, screaming at each other. Well, he’s screaming at her. She’s trying to calm him down, but it’s not working.

Mickey’s having trouble even following the trajectory of their fight, because - well, he’s trying to block them out, but also because it’s not making any fucking sense. One minute he’s angry about some guy she works with, and the next he’s angry about Mandy trying to control him. Mickey doesn’t know, and he doesn’t wanna know.

And he might’ve laid in bed all night, trying to sleep through the yelling, if he hadn’t felt Ian’s tightening muscles in his arms, and known that he was awake, too. That he was being forced to lie there and listen to the fighting.

It isn’t good for him. It isn’t good for any of them, but Mickey has to be willing to say something when Ian can’t.

He moves out of the bed and stomps down the hall, not bothering with knocking when he shoves Mandy’s bedroom door open. His sister has her back in the corner, lower lip quivering, Kenyatta hovering over her, hands curled into fists at his sides.

They both look at him when he walks in.

“The fuck do you want?”

Mickey’s upper lip curls. “It’s two o’ clock in the fucking morning, you think you can shut the fuck up?”

Kenyatta snorts at him and turns his body so he’s facing him, taking a step forward. “The fuck you gonna do about it?”

Mickey raises an eyebrow and barks out a hard, humorless laugh, turning his head to the side. “Don’t be a dumbass.”

And he knows that it’s coming before it does. He knows because he’s been waiting for it to drop since the day he brought Ian home from the Alibi Room, covered in blood, hands frantic to get to any part of each other that they could touch. He knows it’s coming but when it does, the word, “Faggot,” drops like an icicle falling from someone’s window pane and shattering against the ground.

The room snaps tense, and Mickey’s still smiling when he turns and walks back to his room. Still smiling when he palms the gun in the dresser drawer.

Ian catches eyes with him and he falters, stops what he’s doing, like he’s waiting for him to tell him to calm down. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t say a word and Mickey walks right back out into the hallway.

He cocks the gun in his hand and this time he kicks Mandy’s door open.

“I think you’ve outstayed your welcome.”

Everything happens kinda fast after that, and anyway, Mickey’s working on autopilot. He knows how to fight, if he knows how to do nothing else.

But Kenyatta leaves, and he makes a trail of blood behind him, and Mickey doesn’t think he’s coming back.

In the aftermath of it all, the baby’s crying, Svetlana stepping out of the room she shares with Nika - on the nights that Nika stays - cradling him in her arms and looking at Mickey in a way he can’t figure out. Not that he’s ever been able to figure out much about Svetlana.

And Ian’s there, though Mickey has no idea when he got there. He’s there, sitting on the couch. And Mandy’s got her head on his shoulder, and her arms wrapped around his waist, and Ian’s looking at him, too, but not like Svetlana is. There’s something like life in his eyes. Something that hasn’t been there in over two weeks, and… and it isn’t much, but it’s something.

It’s something when Ian closes his eyes, too, and leans his cheek into Mandy’s hair. And the two of them stay like that, wrapped up in each other, sharing whatever dark place they're in that Mickey can't follow them to.

He drops the gun onto the coffee table and goes to the bathroom to clean the blood off his face.

**********

If he could, he’d stay at the house all the time. He’d never leave Ian’s side. But he can’t stay at the house all the time, and Ian doesn’t wanna leave the house, ever, so for a few hours a day, every day, Mickey ends up at the Alibi Room, twitchy and nervous and… not scared, but something close to it, maybe.

Svetlana’s always watching him, which doesn’t help. She looks at him like she knows things he doesn’t, like she’s always got something figured out that he can’t see, and it makes him want to wring her neck half the time.

She sidles up to him one day, wiping off her mouth, crumpled twenty dollar bill in his hand that she passes over to him. He waits for her to go back to her corner, and when she doesn’t, he huffs, and glares at her.

“What?”

“You’re not doctor.”

Mickey raises his eyebrows at her, shoving the twenty into his cash box. “Thank you, are you gonna get back to work now?”

He’s guessing there’s a point in there somewhere, but he doubts it’s one he wants to listen to.

“Orange boy. He needs doctor. Not boyfriend.”

Mickey tenses, and when he looks at her again his stare’s gone ice cold. “That’s not really any of your fucking business.”

And it isn’t. She should be grateful. She should thank him everyday for giving her a place to live and food to eat and taking care of that fucking baby that he doesn’t want anything to do with. Not shoving her nose in shit that doesn’t concern her.

Svetlana huffs and rolls her eyes at him. “Little boy. You think you love him enough to save him? What if he had cancer? Hmm? You think you can fuck the sickness out of him, or you take him to a hospital?”

“He doesn’t have fucking cancer, he’s-”

“No. Not cancer. Still sick. Sick in the mind.” She clucks her tongue at him and shakes her head. “Selfish, stupid, little boy.” She stomps back to her corner and flings the curtain closed.

Mickey doesn’t have it in him to go after her.

**********

If pressed, Mickey couldn’t tell you the first time he thought he was going to die. He had probably been young, his dad had probably been drunk. It had amounted to nothing, in the end, whatever it was.

But the first time that the idea of death scares Mickey, he’s eighteen years old and he’s staring at his boyfriend standing in the middle of the kitchen holding a butcher knife. The first time that the idea of death scares him, it has nothing to do with his own death, and everything to do with the way that the blade is pinpricked against pale, freckled skin on Ian’s forearm.

Time stands still for them for a while.

“Don’t.”

The world is shaking. Or maybe it’s just him, he doesn’t know, but everything’s kind of a blur and Mickey’s mouth is dry and his body feels all tingly numb like he just did a line of coke.

Ian doesn’t look at him. His eyes are focused on the steel that’s a breath away from slicing through tissue. It’s like Mickey’s not even there with him.

“Ian. Please. Please… don’t.”

A hiss of pain leaves Ian’s lips, and Mickey can see the knife pressing in just a little further, just enough, and he’s surging forward and screaming “ _Gallagher!_ ”

Which seems to be enough to distract Ian’s attention, for long enough that Mickey can wrap his fingers around the knife and yank it out of his grip, tossing it onto the stove.

His chest is heaving. There’s a thin line of blood trickling down Ian’s arm, but it’s not bad. It’s not bad and Ian’s gonna be okay.

This time.

“What are you doing? Why would you - why would you do that?”

Ian’s mouth opens and closes. He looks at Mickey’s face, and then at the stove. Then down at the line of red across his arm.

Like he’s just now realizing what happened. Like he just woke up from a dream.

“I - I just. I was just. Worried.”

“Worried.” Mickey repeats the word, not to chastise him, but because he can’t think of a situation where worry translates to slicing up your wrist in the middle of the God damn kitchen. He’s trying to understand. He wants to understand.

Ian looks back up at him and Mickey can see he’s shaking, now, like the shock’s setting in, and Ian nods. “There’s just so much shit.”

And Mickey doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and maybe Ian doesn’t really know what he’s talking about either. But it doesn’t matter because in the next moment, it’s like Ian’s body gives up on holding itself together, and he crumbles. 

Mickey barely manages to catch him before he hits the ground, and they both just crumple together. Ian half on the floor, half in Mickey’s lap. Mickey rubbing his back while Ian makes these choking noises.

And maybe he’s known for a while now, but for the first time, Mickey admits something to himself, in the quiet of his own heart.

Something’s gotta give.

And if they don’t do something now, that something is gonna be Ian.

**********

Manhandling Ian into clean clothes, into the car, into the hospital, is kind of like carrying around a dead body. He doesn’t fight back, but he doesn’t really help them, either, and by the time Mickey and Mandy are sitting in the waiting room, filling out his papers, they’re both breathless and tired.

Not that Mickey hasn’t been tired for a long time already.

They know most of the information that it asks for, and what they don’t know they make up on the spot, because Ian’s gone back to radio silence, and Mickey sure as shit isn’t gonna call Fiona or Lip to ask them.

Besides, he figures, it’s all pointless busy work, anyways.

At one point, a nurse shows up and takes Ian back to be examined. Mickey spends almost twenty minutes tapping his fingers against his knees and staring at the clock, listening to the sound of papers shuffling, and the beating of his own heart.

Mandy reaches over and takes his hand. They squeeze each other so tight that their fingers turn blue, and they don’t let go until the nurse reappears.

“Well?” Mickey barks it at her like she’s the enemy here, even if he knows, in some part of his brain, that she isn’t. She doesn’t seem to mind. He guesses she’s probably used to that.

“We’re admitting him now. You can go back and say your goodbyes now.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice. Mickey pushes past a doctor talking to a crying blonde woman and into the exam room. Ian’s sitting there, staring at the wall.

Mandy hugs him. Ian doesn’t hug her back, but she doesn’t let that deter her, throwing herself into it, squeezing him hard.

“I’ll see you soon.” She kisses his cheek and then glances up at Mickey before slipping out, giving them a private moment of quiet.

It occurs to Mickey that he has no idea what to say.

The first thing that comes out is, “It’s only a couple of weeks,” which doesn’t sound so great, so he follows it up with, “You’ll feel better when this is over.”

Ian glances at him. And that should be good, but it isn’t, because Ian’s never looked at him like that before.

Like he hates him.

The doctor comes in and Mickey finds himself being shooed away, before there’s a chance to say anything else.

He doesn’t say a word on the ride home, either. Because if he did, he knows it’d all come pouring out.

Only a couple of weeks.

**********

Time moves on, even when you don’t think it should. Every day that passes feels like a rubberband being popped against his skin bruises blacker and blacker each time.

Everything goes by without color.

Somehow, this is worse than when Ian ran away from him. Because this time Mickey sent him away.

He feels like a failure.

He was supposed to save him, and he sent him away.

But time moves on.

**********

Six days into Ian’s stay in the psych ward, Debbie Gallagher calls.

Mickey doesn’t want to answer the phone, but he does anyway. Debbie’s his favorite Gallagher, he thinks, besides Ian. She’s not exactly nice to him, but she cares about people. She’s nice to Mandy.

“Ian isn’t here.”

That’s how he answers, and he’s met with a pause, before Debbie clears her throat on the other end.

“Do you know where he is?”

He huffs, and stands up from where he’s sitting on the couch. Walks past Nika and Svetlana to the back porch, where he parks himself and tugs out a cigarette.

“I took him to the hospital.”

“Oh.”

There’s a moment of silence, again, and he thinks maybe Debbie’s gonna yell at him, before she says, softly, “Well, that’s good. How much longer is he going to be there?”

Mickey clears his throat, and blows smoke out through his nose, flicking the cigarette, ashes falling to the ground.

“Eight days.”

“That’s good. You made the right choice, I think.”

It shouldn’t mean shit coming from a fourteen year old girl that he barely knows. And it doesn’t mean anything, really, not when he’s still got the image of Ian’s last stare etched into his head.

But something in him splinters wide open when she says it, regardless, and Mickey barely manages to take a breath in without feeling the wound against his ribcage.

“I thought I could take care of him on my own.”

“Sometimes… sometimes taking care of the people you love means being brave enough to ask for help.”

Mickey doesn’t know if he believes that. He gets off the phone quickly, because he’s not sure he wants to think about it, either.

**********

Svetlana and Nika move out on a Saturday afternoon.

Mickey doesn’t really see it coming, but that’s probably because he doesn’t spend a lot of time worrying about Svetlana these days. Or ever.

But apparently Nika’s aunt died and now she’s inherited her house and it’s some nice place a half hour away that probably looks like a mansion compared to the Milkovich house.

Nika’s on the phone with the electric company when Svetlana walks into Mickey’s room without knocking and sits down with him on the bed. She lets her shoulder brush against his, her arms widened to carry the baby against her chest, and Mickey would move away, except he was here first, and anyway, maybe Svetlana’s presence doesn’t disgust him as much as it used to.

“I bring baby over next weekend.”

Mickey shrugs, because, okay, whatever, he’s learned to stop fighting his wife on the kid. He’s never gonna win that one with her, and it wasn’t like he expected her to drop it, whether she lives down the hall or across town.

Hoped, sure. Expected, not really.

What he really isn’t expecting, though, are the next words that come out of her mouth.

“Good luck with Ian.”

It sounds sincere in a way that nothing she’s ever said before has sounded, and Mickey has to take a minute to look at her. She’s not looking at him, though, she’s staring down at the baby in her arms, and her jaw’s set thin, lips pursed, and he gets the feeling she doesn’t wanna talk about what she just said, anyway.

Sometimes Mickey forgets that Svetlana never wanted this anymore than he did.

And they’re both trying to deal with the aftermath in whatever way they can.

He nods his head. Mutters, “Good luck with the new place.”

They leave within twenty minutes of the conversation. The house, which had already felt empty, now feels like a ghost town, like some kind of open wound.

Mickey and Mandy fall asleep on the couch together. Neither one of them wants to be alone.

**********

11:53 PM.

Mickey taps his fingers against his thigh, stares up at the ceiling. Counts little specks of popcorn in the tile.

11:56 PM.

He rolls over onto his side. Presses his face into the pillow that still kinda smells like Ian and drag in a deep breath.

11:59 PM.

He stops breathing.

Midnight.

Mickey closes his eyes and sighs, hard.

Ian’s coming home today.

**********

The doctor’s been talking to him for three minutes now about medications and shit, but Mickey’s only half listening. He gets the gist of it. There’s a prescription that Ian has to take, and times he has to take the pills, and it’s gonna cost a lot of money because they don’t have insurance, and on, and on, and on again.

Mickey’ll make sure he takes the pills. Mickey’ll find the money for the drugs. He’s resourceful. This much he knows he can do.

He’s only half listening because he knows that Ian’s right on the other side of the double doors, signing his release papers, and he doesn’t know what to expect. He can’t stop thinking about that look on Ian’s face when he’d left him.

Angry. He’d been so angry.

Abandoned. Betrayed. Everything that Mickey wasn’t supposed to do, he’d done to Ian. He’d given up on him. He’d decided it was too hard to deal with on his own, and he’d… he’d left him here.

If Ian walked out and never wanted to see him again, Mickey thinks he’d understand.

The doors open.

The first thing that Mickey notices is something white on his wrist, and his heart sinks to his stomach - but upon further inspection, it’s not a bandage, it’s just a hospital bracelet. Ian’s wearing the same clothes he was wearing when he and Mandy brought him here. He’s saying something to the nurse that opened the door for him, but then she’s dipping back inside, and he’s turning around, and -

And he’s staring at Mickey and Mickey can’t breath because he’s _smiling._ Ian Gallagher is smiling at him.

“Hey.” His voice sounds more clear and open than Mickey’s heard in a long time, and it breaks his heart all over again. Makes his pulse jump.

His own, “hey” sounds forced and choppy in comparison.

Ian flushes and glances at the ground, smile faltering a little. Mickey’s waiting. Waiting for something, for some kind of sign, for some indication that it’s okay, that it’s gonna be okay.

Ian looks back up at him.

“Can we go home now?”

Air fills up Mickey’s lungs. He nods.

“Yeah. Come on.”

**********

Two weeks go by, and for all intents and purposes, Ian seems… okay again. He takes his pills. He gets up and showers.

He sleeps more than he did before. Doesn’t go for as many runs. Mickey notices little things, little moments where Ian pulls away without warning. Shuts down without reason. But he always comes back to him. It never lasts long.

They feel okay again. No one’s hiding the kitchen knives.

One night, when Ian’s done fucking him into their mattress, but he hasn’t yet pulled out, he presses his mouth into the space between Mickey’s shoulder blades, and whispers, “Have I said thank you yet?”

Mickey opens his eyes a little, enough to glance over his shoulder at him, through his eyelashes. “For this?”

Ian laughs, and kisses the nape of his neck. “Well, that too. But also for the other thing.”

Mickey huffs and closes his eyes again. “Drove you to a hospital. Big deal.”

There’s a moment where Ian shifts against his back and Mickey feels it in every nerve ending. But then he settles, and wraps his arms around his middle. Ian kisses his shoulder this time and shakes his head.

“We both know that’s not all you did, Mick.”

He reaches up and runs his fingers through his hair. “Thanks for bringing me home.”

And if Mickey were into this sappy shit, he might have said something like, “ _Thanks for showing me what home feels like._ ”

Instead, he just pushes up against Ian’s body, and the two of them fall asleep.


End file.
